Wednesday, October 28, 2009

PIF Powder

Well, here I am sending out the last of my five Pay It Forward gifts. This time around it's some talc-free body powder.

I got the idea from a tweet Amy Singer of knitty.com sent out a couple of weeks ago. It seemed like the perfect thing to finish up.

It was really simple to make...cornstarch, rice flour and arrowroot powder mixed up with some fragrance oil. I picked narcissus as the scent. It's very sweet and feminine. No one is going to mistake it for patchouli.

The hardest part was finding a cute package. You can find simple cardboard shakers but I wanted something more fun. I finally settled on this shaker that I picked up at the local housewares store. I think it was originally designed for popcorn salt or something like that.

Once I had the shaker, it was just a matter of coming up with a label. I turned that duty over to art director extraordinairre (AKA the husband). I think he did good work.

The last thing I did was add a few grains of rice. I'm not sure if it's an old wives tale or not, but we always added rice to the salt shakers at one of the many restaurants I worked at while I was in college. The theory was that the rice would absorb any moisture and keep the salt flowing. I figured it couldn't hurt.

So, that's the last of my Pay It Forwards. I'm pretty happy with how the mix ended up. There was the Ishbel and Lacy Summer Socks in the yarn category. Sweet Blackberry Wine in the food category and PIF Powder in the smelly thing category. In a class all its own was the the Lacy Sachet. It's part yarn, part smelly thing.

I was trying to decide which was my favorite. I think at the end of the day, I'll have to go with the Ishbel. I hadn't knit any lace in a long time, and it really made me happy. The sachet and the powder would probably tie for second because I made extras for my mom. She gets a real kick out of gifts that arrive without an occasion. But then again, don't we all?